It was just after the eightieth anniversary of the D-Day landings; the flags had barely been lowered, and already the worrying had begun. Will anyone care about the next big anniversary at which, chances are, there will be no veterans? Given the number of middle-aged men in paratrooper berets and Rays Bans, clogging Normandy’s lanes with their Jeeps, and discussing a proposal to build a multi-media D-Day center in Normandy, will the memory of World War II descend into mere Disneyfied entertainment?
For answers to these questions, there is no better place to look than the annual We Have Ways Fest, “the U.K.’s No. 1 Second World War Festival.” This is the live version — the 2024 one was in July — of the Goalhanger podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk. At WHWF, comedian Al Murray and historian James Holland come to life in front of their fans.
During lockdown, doing the podcast filled gaps left by Murray’s cancelled tours (as the comedy persona the “Pub Landlord”) and gave Holland relief from writing. The podcast mixed incredibly well-informed blokey banter and inside jokes from war films with serious myth-busting about everything from whether Hugo Boss designed SS uniforms to whether Patton was a good leader.
The hard-core infantry bivouacs in tents, while softer types glamp in tents on platforms, or enjoy real beds in nearby lodgings.
The show also saved the sanity of thousands of listeners, who became part of the Patreon community known as the “Independent Company.” The IC has generated local drinking groups, international friendships via social networks, and even a marriage or two.
During three intense days of WHWF on the grounds of the Blackpit Brewery in Buckinghamshire, the IC and other visitors’ ranks swell to 3000. The hard-core infantry bivouacs in tents, while softer types glamp in tents on platforms, or enjoy real beds in nearby lodgings.
A river of beer flows through it.
The grounds pullulate with anorak and red-pants types. They geek out over the assembled war vehicles and accessories — tanks galore, artillery pieces, a mobile cinema, and anti-aircraft lights. The crowd obsessively checks the program’s order of battle, lest they miss out on talks by historians and celebrities such as Peter Caddick-Adams, Roger Moorhouse, or James May. Speakers include non-professional historians, many of whom are WHW fans who have been encouraged by Al and James to turn their private obsessions into talks.
There are live demonstrations of artillery firing, a fly-past of Spitfires and Mustangs, and entertainment, which includes sea shanties from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The living history demonstrations have been selected for authenticity.
So, what are WHWF’s answers to how we will remember the Second World War now?
It will go beyond middle-aged men who like things that go “bang!” Women speakers and participants give and attend talks at WHWF on “guy stuff” such as naval history and aviation. Under-sixteens participate free and speaker roster includes a new generation of historians.
More than Dunkirk and D-Day will be remembered. Americans John McManus and Kevin Hymel talk on the U.S. and the overlooked Pacific. At WHWF, Jack Bowsher, one of the IC members inspired to make a private interest public, talks about tanks in Burma. Prit Buttar and Giles Milton cover the Eastern Front.
Unlike the famous Fawlty Towers episode, Germans will be mentioned. British and American historians are becoming more comfortable with the perspective from the other side of the hill. WHWF includes German historians, such as Katja Hoyer and Magnus Pahl. (WHWH bans “Wehraboos”— Nazi sympathizers — and their gear).
Remembering the Second World War will be multi-media. WHWF includes war-gaming and video games as well as new media stars such as Paul Woodage, whose rigorous and varied WW2TV YouTube channel is bringing rigor to YouTube’s Second World War offerings.
The Holocaust will be remembered as part of the war. Speaker and scholar Waitman Beorn pursues the thankless task of reminding that the extermination of the Jews was not a sideline. War crimes and anti-Semitic violence were the modus operandi of the Third Reich’s day-to-day military operations.
Some things will never change. At WHWF, the British are still obsessed with Spitfires and Arnhem. The Americans can’t stay away from Omaha Beach or Patton.
For some of those who fought, the years between 1939 and 1945 were the best of their lives. In those years they weren’t tiny figures in wheelchairs.
Finally, Remembering the Second World War will be fun.
WHWF deftly manages to combine a competition for the ugliest aloha shirt (in support of Finley’s Touch, the charity that Al Murray supports) with Holocaust talks, to the detriment of neither. One of Al and James’ ongoing themes is that the war was — cool kit aside — an immense human event that encompassed all facets of life.
For some of those who fought, the years between 1939 and 1945 were the best of their lives. In those years they weren’t tiny figures in wheelchairs, like they are now. They were hot-shot airmen, brave and tireless nurses and bad-ass grunts. They danced to Glenn Miller and loved pranks.
We must be grateful for their insouciance, adventure-seeking, and risk-taking. It was often only these that pushed through and delivered us from evil.
